Alessandro Tersigni is a freelance cultural critic and historical researcher. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Literary Hub and elsewhere. He manages the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s TOBuilt database.
I was rattling through a box of buttons at a thrift store recently when I came upon a tiny, bronze royal coat of arms. Looking closer, I spotted a finely wrought inscription between its medieval lions and Irish harp: Regina 1837-1887. With a jolt, I realized that I was holding a 134-year-old brooch commemorating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, knowing that generations of Canadians had safeguarded this slightly bent chunk of metal so that I could discover it.
Anything that’s survived umpteen housekeeping purges, pocket holes and turns of fate is valuable no matter its relevance or monetary value. I may not add the miniature crown-topped shield to my most prized possessions, but by taking a moment to hold this piece of history in my palm – to feel its weight and drink in its bright enamel colours – I learned something firsthand about how cultures evolve.
I’ve long felt the same way about the day named after the famous queen. Victoria Day’s origin story is perhaps a little outdated, but the celebration provides unique insight into Canada’s history because of its longstanding central role in our society. Every year, on the second last Monday in May, we feel something – whether actively or subconsciously – about who we are and what it means to be Canadian. Part of that, we’ve now grasped, means interrogating our country’s imperialist legacies and debating how best to animate previously overshadowed Canadian narratives. Queen Victoria’s annual birthday party is a blueprint for how we can stimulate national engagement.
Early on, I asked my parents: “Why Victoria?” Their answer was as crucial to my understanding of Canada as everything I learned about totem poles, wigwams, sugar maples and fleurs-de-lys. She was a queen who changed the world, they said; she chose our capital city, assented to our wish of forming a responsibly governed dominion, and ushered in vast social and economic shifts, both progressive and restrictive.
These days, Victoria Day more often conjures images of boxes of brown glass beer bottles, Muskoka chairs and swimming in recently thawed water. And that transformation – from royal holiday to “May Two-Four” – tells a tale about how Canadian identity has changed over the course of nearly two centuries.
In 1855, The Globe newspaper described festivities honouring Queen Victoria’s birthday in present-day Burlington, Ont., including three 21-gun salutes, horses draped in evergreen boughs and many hip-hip-hoorays for her Majesty. More than 80 years later, in 1937, The Globe and Mail lamented May 24th’s diminishment into “just a holiday,” what with military parades, concerts and bonfires all having been abandoned. By 1977, the paper was painting an image of a May long weekend that is familiar to us in the 2020s: “Victoria Day now means several hours on traffic-clogged highways, followed by a session with broom and pail in musty summer retreats.”
Today, Canada is further from its loyalist beginnings than ever. Queen Victoria has practically become a fictional character. But we still observe her birthday enthusiastically. Even if we’re not paying explicit tribute to the late empress, it’s difficult to forget her name while paddling freshly dusted canoes and thanking nearby Group of Seven-esque pine trees that we don’t have to work.
A few years ago, a number of public figures, including Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth May, suggested that we rename Victoria Day to “Victoria and First Peoples Day.” The idea was to increase awareness of the historical mistreatment of Canadian Indigenous peoples in general and the contemporary inequities this birthed.
Obviously, we’re in need of mainstream opportunities to recognize and critically deconstruct Indigenous issues. I think Ms. Atwood and Ms. May were onto something: They identified Victoria Day’s ability to draw Canadians’ focus. But May Two-Four achieves this because it’s incontrovertible. Everyone knows what to do and when to do it, and knows everyone else is following suit. Rather than tacking our current reckonings with colonialism onto one of Canada’s oldest rituals, we should do for Indigenous peoples what Victoria Day does for Commonwealth culture: celebrate them specifically and unanimously.
I recently visited a 16th-century Wendat village site at the intersection of several subdivisions in Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ont. Once home to 50 longhouses and twice as many residents as Banff, Alta., it’s the largest settlement of its kind in the Great Lakes Basin. Today, though, the only indication that it existed – that real people once thought and felt in the place where I stood – is a lonesome plaque beside a suburban storm management pond. Tacky Neo-Georgian houses loomed while I tried very hard to visualize the little creek, the limestone pebbles and the sky above me as they were 500 years ago.
Having spent many afternoons letting my imagination soar in the magnificently preserved grounds at Fort York, I’m confident that Canada knows how to memorialize its heritage. Truly shining a spotlight requires unequivocal emphasis. Maybe this means a greater number of more precise annual holidays. After all, there are more than 1.6 million Indigenous people in Canada today, and untold millions lived here throughout history. Queen Victoria was just one person – but as a symbol, she lived amid the masses.
The more focused and conspicuous the tradition, the more it shapes our lives. The Victorians understood this. If we follow their lead, maybe we’ll decide what sort of artifacts Canadians will get to stumble upon in the thrift stores of the future.
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